The American Petroleum Institute is launching a new advertising and media campaign designed to boost support for domestic oil production and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that would deliver Canadian tar sands crude to Gulf Coast refineries.

The American Petroleum Institute is revving up a new ad campaign to convince Americans that drilling is good. (AP photo)

The campaign — dubbed “Keys to the Future” — is the latest bid by the oil industry’s largest U.S. trade group to advance the pipeline project, which is currently under State Department review.

API President Jack Gerard told reporters today that the “campaign will help policy makers and the public understand the oil and natural gas industry is a major and constructive force in rebuilding our economy and that it stands ready to do much more.”

The advertising push is focusing first on energy security. API is touting its blueprint for weaning the U.S. off oil imported from countries outside North America. Under the analysis, the U.S. could get 92 percent of its liquid energy needs domestically and from Canada by 2030 — compared to 62 percent today.

But that forecast assumes the U.S. approves the Keystone XL pipeline which would funnel oil sands crude from Alberta to southeast Texas. It also is contingent on a jump in biofuels production, from 8 percent today to 14 percent in 2030.

API’s prediction also is wedded to boosted domestic oil and gas production both on and offshore — including in areas such as along the Pacific Coast where there is strong resistance to offshore drilling.

Jack Gerard (Official photo)

The API campaign comes as federal regulators are honing a five-year plan to govern the sale of oil and gas leases on the outer continental shelf from 2012 through 2017. The administration has proposed oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, but none currently are envisioned for the East and West Coast during that vie-year time frame.

API has been lobbying Congress and the administration for increased access to domestic oil and gas reserves and approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

“It’s taken policymakers far too long to take these constructive steps to generate jobs and generate revenues to the federal government,” Gerard said.

Gerard declined to say how much the trade group would be spending on the ads, beyond describing it as “significant. API plans to have a “significant role in the dialogue over the next 10 weeks,” Gerard added.

“It is amazing the type of snake oil the API is willing to sell to the American public,” said Matt Garrington, deputy director of the Checks and Balances Project. “Right now they are using high gas prices to take political advantage of the public and ask for more handouts.”